1960 Pontiac Catalina - The Longpre Grand Prix

A surefire way for a muscle car aficionado to make a fool out of himself is to get into an argument insisting a particular configuration of car was never built by the factory. There were always exceptions. Take for example Robert Longpre II’s ’60 Pontiac Catalina, which is factory equipped with a Bonneville bucket-seat interior, four-bolt Super Duty 389, and Corvette four-speed transmission.

The seed for this special Pontiac was sown before World War II, when Robert’s grandfather, Raphael Longpre, rose through the ranks to become Pontiac’s production manager at the company’s home plant in Pontiac, Michigan. Robert’s father worked at Pontiac and other GM divisions all through high school and college before joining the Army Air Corps, then after World War II he worked for Pontiac Motor in the Cincinnati office. In 1947, Bob Longpre Sr. formed a partnership with his cousin, also named Bob Longpre, and opened a Pontiac dealership in Arlington, Massachusetts. In 1950 Bob’s father moved the family to California and opened Bob Longpre Pontiac in Monrovia. The dealership was on Route 66, the main drag right through the heart of town.

2/9Bob’s Pontiac appeared in the 1960 Arcadia High School annual with his sister posing on the hood. The picture was taken in spring 1960 while Bob was in the Army. It was shot in the service aisle of Bob’s father’s Pontiac dealership.

In 1958 Bob’s father bought Suburban Pontiac in Bellflower, California. Part of the new car inventory was a red and white ’58 Pontiac 860 two-door hardtop with a hot 370-inch V-8 and three-speed stick. Bob’s dad gave him the ’58 to use as a driver. “Suburban Pontiac had been big into drag racing,” Bob tells us, “but the recession in 1958 took a lot of new car dealers down. This had been their drag race car, and I doubt that GMAC or Pontiac would have wanted to buy the car back. It had a lot of horsepower, but it was cursed with a three-speed column-shift transmission. The shift linkage was always locking up in one gear or another. The shifting for the three-speed was so bad that it was common for Pontiac drag racers to start out in Second gear, hoping they could get at least one shift without jamming. I never took it to the drag strip, but I had lots of street races.”

When the ’59 Pontiac models arrived, he had the chance to move up to a different car, and he chose to go with an automatic transmission. “As it turned out, the silver Catalina coupe I named Hydra-Magic was fast,” says Bob. “I ran it in A/Stock Automatic, and the car won lots of trophies at nearby San Gabriel drag strip.”

3/9Who you know makes all the difference. Using his family connections in the upper echelons of Pontiac management, Bob Longpre II was able to special-order a ’60 Catalina with a Bonneville interior, Corvette four-speed transmission, and a host of engine upgrades.

Bob graduated from high school in June 1959, and his graduation present was to spend a month with his grandfather at the Pontiac plant and learn how cars were manufactured. “My granddad introduced me to the various department heads—Pete Estes, John DeLorean, and General Manager Bunkie Knudsen.”

In September 1959, Bob returned to Detroit with Hydra-Magic for the NHRA Nationals. He says, “At that time, my granddad made the suggestion that I let him help build me a special race car for 1960. I asked how special, and he said anything that I wanted.”

Earlier that year, while he was staying with his grandfather, Bob was cruising Woodward Avenue and spotted a ’59 Catalina two-door hardtop that Bunkie Knudsen had custom-made for his daughter. “It had a funny squared-off roof that later became the ’62 Grand Prix roofline,” remembers Bob. “The interior had individual front bucket seats not available in a Catalina, and a four-speed transmission obviously pirated out of a Corvette. It also had funny-looking finned wheels instead of wheel covers.”

4/9Since the Catalina’s interior came from a Bonneville, there are Bonne emblems on the wood-accented dash. The Pontiac has power windows but no power brakes. Bob didn’t like the wide power-brake pedal.

When he got back to California, Bob ordered what he wanted through his dad’s dealership. “The special options I desired that weren’t on the order form were handwritten on a list and sent to my grandfather for production,” says Bob. “As a 17-year-old kid I made some goofy decisions on how I wanted the car equipped. I thought a 3.90 rearend was best, but Bunkie Knudsen convinced me a 4.56 rearend with Saf-T-Track would work best for drag racing.”

Since the Catalina had the same interior dimensions as the Bonneville, fitting the Bonne interior into the Catalina body was easy. The bucket seat mounts were welded in on the assembly line. The four-speed stick shift, however, could not be accommodated on the assembly line. Instead, a four-speed was sent over from the Corvette plant and installed at a service department housed at the end of the production line. “Afterward, due to public demand, there were maybe 15 Pontiacs ordered with the part number created for my car, all with four-speeds installed at the end of the line,” says Bob. “My ’60 Pontiac was the 12,690th car built that model year.”

It took about a month for the Pontiac to be built. Unbeknownst to Bob, between when he ordered the car and drove it off the assembly line in Michigan, his grandfather had Ray Nichols in Indianapolis add some Super Stock modifications, including a lumpy solid-lifter cam. Bob recalled the performance of the car was very good but not exceptional. He said it was so big and heavy, racing it was like “trying to teach a fat man to become a ballet dancer.” The first time down the quarter-mile it ran 98 mph with a 14.30 e.t. Not bad, but realizing it wasn’t fast enough to win in 1960, Bob started to hop things up.

The first improvement was a set of tube headers with cutouts by Doug Robinson at Horsepower Engineering in Pasadena, California. Next the OE two-ply tires were ditched in favor of Atlas Bucron four-plies sourced from a local Chevron station. A drag racer’s dream, Bucrons were famous for a supersoft, sticky compound backed with an incredible guarantee: If you wore out the tires within so many miles Chevron would replace them for free.

Bob’s dyno tune and engine guy was Roger Bursch, owner of Scientific Automotive in Pasadena. Roger had a dyno, but he couldn’t run cars uncorked because of residential housing adjacent to the shop. The solution was to drive down Colorado Boulevard to Champion Chevrolet and borrow Don Nicholson’s dyno. After identifying the 348-horse, four-bolt 389’s hunger to round-off camshafts, and battling low oil pressure spinning main bearings, the final result was an NHRA-legal 389 punched 0.060 over to 403 inches. Equipped with Jahn’s pistons, and cammed with an Isky E-2 carrying a Pontiac part number, the Poncho picked up 30 hp at the rear wheels. By the time it was done, the Catalina, uncorked and shod with Bucrons, held the Super Stock record at San Gabriel dragstrip, running 104.71 mph with a 13.41 e.t.

In February 1960, Bob joined the Army. He hoped to store the Pontiac, but his dad informed him they were in the car business and cars were not to be kept as pets. They were merchandise. The ex-drag car was shod with Vogue tires and sold like cattle.

Fast-forward 50 years to July 16, 2010. Bob is at his Westminster, California, Lexus dealership when he spots an ad on eBay for a ’60 Pontiac Catalina with a Bonneville interior. The seller’s name is George Knevelbaard, who Bob discovers is extremely honest and a Pontiac preservationist to boot. George bought the car in 1993 from Dale Boomgaarden, a Gilroy, California, drag racer who bought the ’60 in 1964 from Bob Shiro Motors in San Jose. Dale’s description of the car when he bought it fit Bob’s car to a T, right down to the Vogue tires. In 2004, George loaded up the ’60 Pontiac and moved from Artesia, California, to retire in Michigan.

The first thing Bob did when he was reunited with his “brass hat” drag car was to contact Raymond Harstad at J&R Motorsports in Costa Mesa, California. Raymond is a fully-certified master mechanic and one of those rare individuals who can disassemble a vintage automobile and put it back together without signs of its having ever been apart. Next, along with his Mopar racer buddy Bob Small, Bob hauled the gutted shell down to Steve Kouracos’ auto body shop in Rancho Santa Margarita, California. When the ’60 returned to Raymond’s shop for reassembly, it was in a perfect rendition of its original Newport Blue metallic paint.

Bob recalls the ’60s as the Golden Age of factory sponsored drag racing, a time when, if you found a part you liked, the factory would give it a part number so you could race with it. He also considers himself very fortunate for having the opportunity to enjoy this particular car not once, but twice.